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Beorhtgyth

Discussion of the name

Beorhtgyth is an Old English feminine name comprising the elements beorht ‘bright, distinguished, pure’ and gyð ‘combat, battle, war’.

The only entries in the PASE corpus are for Beorhtgyth 1, a name on an eighth-century slab from Hartlepool, and Beorhtgyth 2, a catch-all category for occurrences of this name in DB. Searle (1897: 88-9) notes further instances, however, namely a royal abbess listed in the Durham Liber Vitae, another (or perhaps the same?) abbess from an eighth-century context and one or two instances among the post-Conquest benefactors of Hyde Abbey. Nevertheless, the name was clearly extremely rare even if not entirely un-evidenced in pre-Conquest England.

Bibliography

Searle 1897: W. G. Searle, Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge, 1897)

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Brisid(us) 

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Beorhtgyð

  Phillimore edition: Brictith

  Alecto edition: Beorhtgyth

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Devon	Phil. ref. 36,15	Vill Woolacombe	DB Spelling Brisid	Holder 1066 Beorhtgyth 'of Woolacombe'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Theobald fitzBerner	1086 Subtenant Jocelin 'of Woolacombe'	Fiscal Value 0.25	1066 Value 0.50	1086 Value 0.50	Confidence A	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

People of this name

• Beorhtgyth 3 - Beorhtgyth ‘of Woolacombe’ (Devon)